


In Your Dreams

by jessie_pie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Love, Dreams, Gen, Mostly Fluff, One Shot, Some Humor, Some angst, human things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessie_pie/pseuds/jessie_pie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You gotta stop poking around in my dreams. I need some me time."<br/>          - Dean to Castiel, Dark Side of the Moon</p>
<p>Contains swearing and references to death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Ecstatic thanks to Osito for beta-ing!
> 
> (Supernatural does not belong to the author of this fic.)

The light was golden over the calm water, the air was cool, and frogs were chirping in the rushes. Dean leaned back in the plastic lawn chair, the fishing pole held loosely in his hands, truly relaxed for the first time in a long time.  
The dock sank slightly as it took on more weight. Dean sensed a presence behind him. His shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.  
“Hello, Cas.”  
The angel stepped next to him and gazed directly at him. “This is not the first time you have had this dream.”  
“And it isn’t the first time you’ve interrupted it,” Dean said, giving the angel a sidelong glance. “What emergency do you want me to wake up for this time?”  
“There is no emergency,” Castiel answered.  
They were silent for a moment, the human and the fallen angel, gazing out over the still lake woven by the human’s mind. Eventually, Castiel turned his head to look at Dean again.  
“You are… fishing?” Cas tilted his head to the side as he contemplated him. “And you _enjoy_ it. Why? How does it work?”  
Dean nearly told Cas to fuck off and let him fish alone, but something about the angel’s earnest, confused stare changed his mind. He seemed to genuinely care. It had been a long time since anyone had been sufficiently interested in what Dean was doing to want to learn it. It almost felt like it had when Sam was a kid and worshipped his every move.  
He pushed himself out of his slouch. “This is a fishing rod. It has a reel, which is attached to a line…”  
The angel watched every gesture, listening attentively.  
A half-smile unconsciously appeared on Dean’s face as he taught the angel of the Lord how to fish for trout.

 

Dean nodded to himself, satisfied. His baby was going to purr like a kitten when he was through. It wasn’t often he got to spend an afternoon like this.  
He wasn’t exactly surprised when a cool shadow suddenly blotted out the warmth of the sun on his back.  
“’Lo, Cas.”  
Behind Dean, Castiel examined the scene. The Impala was parked on some level gravel off of the edge of an empty two-lane road. Sunlight glinted off of its freshly polished black sides, and the hood was up, revealing a labyrinth of hoses and pipes more confusing than the nature of the Holy Trinity.  
“Why are you happy? You _like_ this car. Why would you want to have to repair it?”  
Dean didn’t need to turn around to see the look of confusion on the angel’s face, or imagine the bird-like way in which he was studying the engine.  
“I’m not fixing it, I’m _maintaining_ it. There’s a difference, genius.”  
Castiel didn’t answer. Dean turned his head to see that the angel was standing close behind him, inspecting the engine with such an air of puzzlement that Dean had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. It had been a while since he’d found anything so funny.  
“Look, I’ll show you,” Dean said, wiping his grease-stained hands on a rag that was so blackened that Cas privately doubted it would do any good. “See here? That’s a spark plug. It makes a spark to ignite the fuel, and that makes the engine run. But the timing matters, so you have this thing, called a distributor cap…” Castiel followed Dean’s explanation as best he could. The shadows of the nearby trees slowly lengthened as Cas wondered if the whole of the Lord’s creation could be as complicated as the inner workings of a ’67 Impala and Dean waxed eloquent to his attentive pupil.

 

Dean mopped the sweat out of his eyes with a crumpled paisley handkerchief. He didn’t care what his mom said, he would be glad to mow her lawn once a week for the rest of his life, twice a week, even. He had just yanked once on the cord that would send the engine roaring back to life when a shadow fell across the red mower.  
He looked up, stomach sinking sickeningly as recognized the figure standing in the lawn and understood its implications.  
“Godammit, Cas!”  
The angel’s blue eyes widened with shock and confusion.  
“Is this a bad time, Dean? I thought it would be alright. You were alone, and you seemed content.” His voice dropped into a lower tone as he finished the sentence.  
“Dammit, no, Cas. It’s not that. It’s just…” Dean scowled, trying to find the words. “It’s just, before you were here, I thought all of this was real. I thought it was my life and, yeah, I was ok with that.”  
“You were glad to be able to follow the commandments and honor your mother?” Castiel seemed sympathetic, and somewhat pleased with his friend’s apparent sense of duty.  
“I thought I _had_ a mother,” Dean barked. “Thanks a lot, you winged ass. Get out of my head.”  
Before his eyes, the angel vanished.

 

The pie was delicious, the waitress was cute, and the late evening sun streaming through the windows was warm, but not hot. Yet even with all of this, he still felt that there was something missing. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. Dean stared at the empty bench seat across from him.  
“Anything more I can get you, sugar?” the waitress asked, smiling at him. Dean was about to give her an impertinent answer when a bell chimed, indicating that someone had stepped through the front door. Someone tired-looking, and moderately tall, wearing a wrinkly trench coat.  
“Dean? Is this a good time?” Castiel asked quietly. It seemed that the waitress had vanished into thin air, but Dean didn’t care. The diner didn’t feel empty anymore.  
“What is it this time?” Dean planted his elbow on the tabletop, and watched as the angel slid into the seat across from him.  
“It’s my phone.” Castiel held out the aforementioned object. “The picture of battery only has one line in it, and it is blinking. Is it broken?”  
Dean shook his head and tried not to snort. Getting Castiel a cell phone had finally given him a good definition of the phrase “necessary evil”. After how many centuries of existence, the angel remained worse with technology than even his father had been. “It’s running out of charge, Cas.”  
The angel’s eyes widened rather comically. “Do I have to get a new one? I do not want to listen to the voice telling me what to do again.”  
“You don’t need to get a new one,” Dean explained. His posture was different than it had been even a few minutes ago; his shoulders were squared as though he had picked up a weight he could carry with some effort, but no discomfort. “All you have to do is plug it in to the wall for a few hours. Give me the phone; I’ll show you how…”


End file.
